What up fellow UCer’s, been swooping around the site for a couple weeks now and I figure it’s time to introduce myself…
It all started back in 2008 during my freshman year in college as I started noticing blood in my stool pretty frequently. At first I thought it was some infection and didn’t want to make a huge deal about it. Then it didn’t stop. I finally told my girlfriend (now wife) and parents about it and got set up for a doctor’s appt. First doc wrote it off as hemorrhoids and said it would go away in a few months. It didn’t go away so I went back to the same doc and had to plead for a sigmoid procedure which was done the next week. Wowza, what the procedure, being able to see inside yourself is pretty strange! Anyways, after the procedure I was diagnosed with left-sided colitis and prescribed enemas because of the limits of the affected area. I asked the doc about food and she said I could eat whatever I wanted, and I was like “awesome!” So I proceeded to use the enemas and eat a mostly unbalanced, unhealthy diet like any college kid. I would bleed every now and then but there was no pain or cramping so all was good. Ended up getting engaged summer of my freshman year and married in the winter to my awesome wife :). All was going great, we landed an apartment, jobs and proceeded with life until February 2011-
Enter my UC in an all out Bum-Rush:
One Thursday I was working and severe abdominal pain hit me hard and didn’t let up. Got home and was on the toilet every 10 minutes. Couldn’t. Do. Anything. Scheduled a doc (luckily I am still on my parent’s insurance, though the closest place to get coverage is 2 hours away) appt and they gave me pain medicine and shot me up with an antibiotic. Went back in a couple of days to get a referral for a c-scope which I had done later in the month….
My left-sided colitis had progressed into Pancolitis (total colon affected) from September 2008 to February 2011. Nothing was stopping my gnarly flare until the doc prescribed prednisone and colazal. Prednisone slowed the flare down, but the pain and cramping and pooping came back with a vengeance when I quit the prednisone. Now it’s march and I’m currently tapering off my current dose of prednisone which started at 40MG (at 20MG now) and have a appt scheduled to talk about Humira and other options.
I have started the SCD diet (2 days ago) and hope to see results from that because I’m kinda suspicious of those darn pharmaceutical companies who gotta make big bank off of our bleeding bums :(.
Look forward to chatting with everyone and sharing/supporting fellow UC folk
-Curren
